A Dream Within A Dream: The Bodies We Wear Blog Tour: Review + Giveaway

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for The Bodies We Wear! Today I have my review of the book to share with you - and don't forget to enter to win your own copy!

The Bodies We Wear (The Bodies We Wear #1)

Author: Jeyn Roberts

Genre: YA Science Fiction/Dystopia

Release Date: September 23, 2014

Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers

Description:

A streetwise girl trains to take on a gang of drug dealers and avenge her best friend’s death in this thriller for fans of Scott Westerfeld and Robin Wasserman.

People say when you take Heam, your body momentarily dies and you catch a glimpse of heaven. Faye was only eleven when dealers forced Heam on her and her best friend, Christian. But Faye didn’t glimpse heaven—she saw hell. And Christian died.

Now Faye spends her days hiding her secret from the kids at school, and her nights training to take revenge on the men who destroyed her life and murdered her best friend. But life never goes the way we think it will. When a mysterious young man named Chael appears, Faye's plan suddenly gets a lot more complicated. Chael seems to know everything about her, including her past. But too many secrets start tearing her world apart: trouble at school, with the police, and with the people she thought might be her friends. Even Gazer, her guardian, fears she's become too obsessed with vengeance. Love and death. Will Faye overcome her desires, or will her quest for revenge consume her?

The Bodies We Wear is a thrilling and engrossing first book in a new young adult dystopian series. It follows our main character, Faye, as a teenage girl of seventeen. We learn that when she was only eleven, her father was arrested and sent to prison for dealing drugs - and then the people he owed came after her. They overdosed her on the popular drug Heam and left her to die. Luckily, a retired cop found her and was able to bring her back - but not without scars, both physical and emotional. Since that day, Faye has been centering her entire life around getting revenge for what was done to her. She trains with Grazer, the cop who saved her and then took her in when nobody else wanted her, for hours a day. She has also been watching and following the four men on her list - the ones who took her soul and ruined her life that day. She believes that she is condemned to hell because of what she saw when they forced her to take Heam. Knowing that she won't get far in life because of the prejudice against Heam users and addicts - no matter the cause - Faye is determined to take the men who stole her life down before she dies. Enter Chael - an incredibly mysteriously and handsome guy around her age who seems to know everything about her - even things that nobody else should know. He's dodgy and won't answer any of her questions until she can figure out who he really is. This is just another inconvenience for Faye in her life - along with school, fake friends, bullies, the police, and Grazer questioning her need for revenge. Will Chael and Grazer finally make Faye see that vengeance isn't the answer or will her hate and need for retribution consume and destroy her?

This book was by far one of the most fascinating novels I've read this year. It combines so many genres - mystery, thriller, dystopia, fantasy, romance, action, science fiction - together that it can't simply be defined by a label. Faye is a great heroine for the book. She's obviously flawed - we learn that about her right from the beginning. Although she thinks she's doomed to go to Hell and that she has no soul, Faye has redeeming qualities too. She's smart, devoted to her training, determined to carry out her mission of revenge, and kind and loving - especially to Grazer, her guardian. I found her very realistic and easy to identify with. After learning the secrets of Faye's past, it's easy to see why she would devote her entire life to retribution against those who ruined her at such a young age. She's an amazing fighter and definitely kicks some serious butt in the book, which I thought was awesome. Chael was an intriguing character - one that had me guessing for a bit. I thought I knew the answers of his existence - who he really is and why he's there - but learning the depth of the situation made it all the more emotional for me. I liked that the author included this bit of paranormal/fantasy in an otherwise mostly dystopian story because it makes it stand out from the rest in a unique way. There's lots of mysteries and twists throughout the book - mostly concerning Chael - but I loved attempting to figure them out before Faye did. Some of the twists in the plot caught me by surprise and left me reeling for a long while afterwords. There's so much amazing potential to this story and I'm so excited that it's just the first book in a series. I can't wait to see where it will go from here and how our characters will develop and grow. The writing was fast paced and I found the book an easy and quick read because I was so immersed in the story, which is told from Faye's point of view. I loved her attitude and the fact that we get to hear all of her sarcastic inner dialogue as well as her pain, grief, hope, dreams, and everything else that makes her unique. I very highly recommend this to fans of science fiction and dystopian fiction, as well as those who enjoy fantasy, paranormal, and thrillers. There's something for everyone and you'll be begging for more after you finish the final words.

JEYN ROBERTS is the author of Dark Inside and Rage Within. Her first story was published in a middle-grade anthology called Let Me Tell You when she was sixteen. She graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in writing and psychology and received her MA from the prestigious creative-writing graduate course at Bath Spa University. Jeyn is a former singer, songwriter, actress, bicycle courier, and tree planter. Her favorite authors include Betty Smith, J. K. Rowling, Ernest Hemingway, Douglas Coupland, and Jonathan Stroud, and her five favorite books of all time are A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Girlfriend in a Coma, Memoirs of a Geisha, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, and Harry Potter. Jeyn lives in Canada. Visit her at www.jeynroberts.com or follow her on twitter at @JeynRoberts.